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A Librarian At The Races

High Head Librarian Holly Jahangiri and her contracted partner District Policing Commissioner Pel Darzin were at a quaint rural inn, celebrating their fifth renewal of their partnering contract. The inn was blessedly free of Earth influence. It was built of whatever stone, wood, or mud that had come to hand, and the walls were whatever shape seemed like a good idea at the time. Some walls were so high, they must have been the result of a contest between two of the builders, and some were high enough for all practical purposes, but seemed to stop when that particular workman had lost interest or had gone on vacation.

Both partners found it highly relaxing, for both worked in Council City, which was just purely eat up with Earth (meaning, in case you, dear reader, don’t speak Earth idiom, many of Council City’s residents were devoted to all things Earth).

Now, for example, they were sitting outdoors on stools stuffed with farm-to-cushion tuphets, a sort of springy lichen. Each held a thick piece of dry-roasted gullerwidge in one hand and a bottle of unfermented sourberry juice in the other, enjoying the view of the valley of gillyflowers which the inn overlooked.

A gabble of voices from the inn behind them resolved in a noise with which Darzin was all too familiar: that of someone trying to prevent someone else from barging in on the privacy of some third person.

Inevitably, the unsuccessful guardian of access apologized with the time-honored excuse of, “He just wouldn’t listen!” while the triumphant barger-inner stood puffing before the partners’ stools.

“Be you th’ libr’r’an?” he asked Holly.

“I am. And this is my partner, District Policing Commissioner Pel Darzin.” They lifted their food and drink in lieu of hooking thumbs with him.

“Oh!” gasped the interrupter. “That might come in handy, too!”

He pulled up a stool and sat down. “I be a rural from hereabouts,” he said, unnecessarily. “An’ I do be havin’ trouble with my pratties.”

Holly’s attention perked up. In her youth, she had been a dab hand at the pratties and still had a soft spot for them.

“What sort of trouble?” she asked.

“That’s why I wanted a libr’r’an. You might know from one of yer bookie things what’s wrong, for the vet’nry don’t. Their wool is a-comin’ out in clumps like ‘at.” He held up two gigantic fists, fingers laced together. “An’ they walk like their feetses hurt.”

Pratty hooves were notoriously hard (just ask any unfortunate who’d annoyed one). Anything that gave pratties sore feet needed to be dealt with toot sweet (which, Holly’s Earth-bedazzled friends told her meant pretty damn fast).

“We’ll come tomorrow and look at the pratties,” Holly said. “Leave your direction at the front desk, and we’ll see you in the field bright and early.”

“Aye. Thankee.”

And he left.

“You don’t know what’s wrong?” asked Darzin, fairly amazed that there was something Holly didn’t know.

“I have a notion,” Holly said, “but I’ll need to inspect them to be sure.”

Darzin, who had met a pratty or two in his line of work, said, “…Inspect … pratties?”

Holly gently patted his foot with hers and smiled reassurance.

“I’ve done it before, and I can do it again.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

MY PROMPT FOR TODAY: Holly Jahangiri

MA